Directors Guild Award Nominations Announced!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is officially a major Oscar contender. Find out who else is a shoe-in.

It's not tearing up the box office the way Sony hoped it would – it's been out for over two weeks and only just barely made it's $90 million budget back – but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is turning out to be a major headliner in the build up to the Academy Awards, racking up WGA nominations, PGA nominations and now a nod to David Fincher at the Director's Guild Awards. It's the closest thing to a surprise we're going to get this year, that a serial killer film so full of rape and… well, rape… is pretty much a lock to be considered alongside such shoe-ins as… well, look at the nominees, announced today:

Statistically speaking, one of these men – and yes, only men this year – will win the Best Director Academy Award. As the DGA site itself points out, since the guild began issuing awards in 1948, the winner has gone on to win Best Director at the Oscars all but seven years. Those years? 1968 (Anthony Harvey won the DGA award for The Lion in Winter, Carol Reed won the Oscar for Oliver), 1972 (Francis Ford Coppola won the DGA award for The Godfather, Bob Fosse won the Oscar for Cabaret), 1985 (Steven Spielberg won the DGA award for The Color Purple, Sydney Pollack won the Oscar for Out of Africa), 1995 (Ron Howard won the DGA award for Apollo13, Mel Gibson won the Oscar for Braveheart), 2000 (Ang Lee won the DGA award for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for Traffic), and 2005 (Rob Marshall won the DGA award for Chicago, Roman Polanski won the Oscar for The Pianist).

It's worth noting that the discrepancy has happened more often in lately than ever before, but still, that's a hell of a track record. It also means that Steven Spielberg may be s**t out of luck for War Horse, which was heretofore considered something of a lock in the major categories.

CraveOnline will be back with more news on the Oscar race after we thank our agents.